Rachel Thompson

Jack Canon's American Destiny

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Pirate Trials: Hung by the Neck Until Dead by Ken Rossignol

 

Pirate Trials: Hung by the Neck Until Dead – Ken Rossignol

Amazon Kindle US

Amazon Kindle UK

Genre – Non Fiction

Rating – PG

2.5 (2 reviews)

Free until 31 August 2013

Second in the series of Pirate Trials from news reports of the days and actual trial documents. NOTE: This is not a pirate romance novel or a Johnny Depp adventure of fantasy and make believe, but the details and drama from first person confessions and details of the charges against real pirates. This is not Hollywood. The real words of one pirate issued to a crowd who were waiting for his execution with his admontion to others to avoid the temptations brought on by hard liquor might be a little too much for some souls.  Parental guidance is the way to go for children and some adults need to avoid the tedious drama of this non-fiction and retreat to the safe haven of romance novels with pirates who are simply "hung" and not "hanged".
Join this bloodthirsty crew of pirates on ships which includes the dying declarations of the most brutal and vicious deeds ever set upon innocent civilians and merchant ship crews. The Demon Rum is cited as the chief cause by one pirate for his awful and murderous acts. Their day of reckoning came when they faced their final day of judgement when captured in Spain.
When a crew of passengers leapt from their disguise to overpower a steamship after it left New York on a trip to Portland, Maine, the pirates claimed the ship in the name of the Confederacy, at the height of the Civil War! Learn what happened to the ship and the pirates.

Ruined by Rachel Hanna

Ruined

Ruined is a New Adult novel full of romance, angst and tons of emotion!

Willow Blake has a secret. A big one. And when she and her mother move cross country to protect that secret, her guard is up to protect her heart.

When she meets handsome Reed Miller, she feels her walls start tumbling down and the fear is overwhelming. If he finds out her secret, will he hate her forever?

Just when she thinks things are settling down, a new house guest makes her second guess everything she knows to be true about who she is and what she wants.

Caught between her past life and her new one – and two sexy men – will choose to be alone or fight for her own happiness?

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Genre - New  Adult Romance

Rating – R

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Website http://rachelhannaromance.com/

Dermot Davis – 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Becoming a Published Author

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Becoming a Published Author

by: Dermot Davis

1. I didn’t know how easy it was to become a published author.

2. I didn’t know that apart from family and friends no one would care about my published book.

3. I didn’t know it would be so difficult to sell my extraordinary masterpieces as a published author. I have to promote, advertise and market them, what now?

4. I didn’t know that you had to become a publisher – as well as a writer – to become a published author.

5. I didn’t know that there were so many published authors that were competing for fewer readers. A million other books published every year? Seriously?

6. I didn’t know that you had to become a marketing guru to become successful as a published author.

7. I didn’t know how vital social networking was in becoming a published author that sold books.

8. I didn’t know that I needed to take a crash course in book cover design and another course in writing dynamic product descriptions and other such promotional copy that grabbed the reader and enticed them to buy my book!

9. I didn’t know that approximately 80% of self-published books will only sell about 50 copies in their life-time.

10. I didn’t know how absolutely wonderful and invigorating and exciting the whole world of self-publishing can be!!!!

Zen & Sex

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Genre - Romance

Rating – PG13

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Website www.dermotdavis.com

Corr Syl the Warrior by Garry Rogers

Part One:  Corr Syl

The Tsaeb Warriors.  In the peaceful Tsaeb civilization, few warriors remain to preserve the ancient knowledge of combat and war.  It is good that warriors persist, for like unworthy thoughts, dangerous individuals and species appear from time to time, and civilization needs its defenders.

History of the Tsaeb.  The Warriors. 
Morgan Silverleaf, Librarian of Wycliff District

Corr Syl

The warrior wiggled his furry toes, scratched an ear, and thought about singing with Ralph and dancing with Allysen last night.  He grinned and rolled out of bed.  As he reached toward his jar of dried fruit and nuts, he sensed the attack and dropped to the floor. 

The assassin came across the smooth stone with quick light steps, his gleaming blade slashing down from right to left.  The warrior had dropped right beneath the cut, and now he leapt forward, drew a short sword, and turned to block the whirling assassin’s rising cut.  As the assassin recoiled from the block, the warrior drew his long sword and attacked in 'two heavens' form, rotating blades beating down the defenses of the backing assassin.  In seconds the warrior stopped, his short sword holding the enemy blade, the edge of his long sword across the imaginary assassin’s neck.

The attack could follow many other paths.  Instead of completing a full spin after the blocked cut, the assassin could have directed his momentum 'over the mountain' onto the warrior's shoulders or skull.  To meet that slower, but stronger maneuver, the warrior might continue his turn into his left quarter, letting his short sword trail into a high block position.  Then he would step in and shove the assassin back, and again use two heavens.  Or . . . .

The instant an attack began, chemical and electrical impulses generated by nodes throughout his body would accelerate the warrior's movements.  Had the assassin been another Tsaeb warrior, the attack would have been complete before the warrior reached his sword.

Corr Syl, the youngest fully-trained warrior of Wycliff District, liked the direct block and the power of two heavens, but he knew that if he drew both swords, his long sword could end the encounter almost instantly.  He grinned, and his long gray whiskers twitched when he thought about the damage the edge-to-edge block by his almost indestructible drahsalleh sword would do to a metal blade.  He added the defense against the assassin's over the mountain maneuver to the collection of tactics in the battle kingdom of his memory world and shifted his thoughts.

Corr's battle kingdom held perfect memories of thousands of encounters, both from real practices with other warriors and from his imagination.  Narrow canyons, waterfalls, caves, and dark woods filled the battle kingdom.  A tendril of Corr's conscious mind often visited and relived favorite encounters.  After Nursery Canyon where Corr had spent his childhood, Corr liked the battle kingdom best. 

Barren lands and seas existing only as outlines covered most of Corr's memory world.  If no mortal attack or accident occurred, the outlines would eventually fill with images, emotions, and thoughts. 

Corr twitched his fur-covered skin, and pulled on his weapons harness.  As he snapped the smooth gray clasp bearing the warrior's insignia, he ended the thread of an old argument that had lost significance.  He had always questioned the value of mental combat exercises involving close-quarters surprise attacks.  No normal assassin, and almost no Tsaeb warriors, could come so close undetected.  But Corr's teacher had insisted that Corr practice such situations at least once every day.  After 13 years and thousands of practices, Corr's complaint had faded.  So he gave it up.  All the warriors Corr knew added a close encounter attack to their other daily exercises.  It must serve a purpose.

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Genre –  Science Fiction

Rating – PG

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Website http://garryrogers.com/

Dermot Davis – How to Make Your Characters Believable

How to Make Your Characters Believable

by: Dermot Davis

If you don’t have believable characters, you don’t have a believable or engrossing story. I’ve seen many terrific stories not fully realized to their full potential because the characters were wooden, one-dimensional and ultimately not credible.

When I write unbelievable characters – and let’s face it, we all do from time to time – it is usually because I’m not sure about the character in the first place. If I’m fuzzy in my mind about my character, then that character cannot but be fuzzy on the page. My solution is to know the character – in my mind – as a fully realized human being, albeit one that exists in my mind only.

This is most difficult to do when creating a character from whole cloth. Creating a character means more than coming up with a name, an age, a gender and some work and personality tidbits: the character you conjure up should be as real as the other people that populate in your head, people from your so-called “real life.” Think of all the amazing characters from literature that have endured down through the years; some characters, we’re not even sure if they were real personages or not: Madame Bovary, Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Jane Eyre, Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Ebenezer Scrooge, Becky Sharp, James Bond and so on. Many of us know these characters so well that in any given situation, we could answer the question: what would my character do now? For instance, if the house was on fire and it was not sure if anyone was trapped in the house, what would James Bond do? What would Ebenezer Scrooge do? Or Rhett Butler? Who would dash back in, without thinking? Who would think before running back in? Who wouldn’t run back in, at all? Who would encourage someone else to run back in? Who would run in to check on people? Who would run in to check on valuables?

If you’re not sure what your character would do in eventualities such as this, then you don’t fully know your character and they are not going to be well represented on the page. One quick and surefire way of creating believable characters is to base them on someone you already know. It’s fairly safe to say that many of the above literary personages and others not mentioned were based on people or an amalgam of people that the author personally knew. It’s said that Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on a former professor of his; Ian Fleming based James Bond around his brother Peter and other spies like him that worked for the Navel Intelligence Division during the Second World War. Flaubert based Madame Bovary on a true personage from his village.

Usually when I base a character upon someone that I once knew, I will invariably remember them in a biased way that may not fully represent their full personality. For instance, I will remember a past school teacher of mine very differently than his work colleagues, his wife and indeed his children would remember him. Very often we naturally distort a particular memory of someone based on our evaluation of our experiences with that person; did I feel traumatized or joyful as a result of my exposure to them, for example.

Very often the character that ends up on the page bears no resemblance to the personage upon which they are based. What the exercise has done, however, is give us a template, so to speak, a character template upon which to build upon and give us a clear picture in our heads of how we think that person would react to other characters and other elements in the story.

Brain

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Genre - Contemporary Fiction

Rating – PG13

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Website www.dermotdavis.com